full catastrophe living

I found this website when I put in the google search “praying for death.” I read the post that it linked to and the guy was talking about “praying for death,” as a compromise between killing himself and continuing to suffer so that others wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of his death. I feel that way a lot. So few people I think really know how to respond to somebody who is really suffering, they don’t want to acknowledge it, as if by doing so it makes it real. It’s real whether it’s acknowledged or not! I have a good friend named Sue who is a pro at telling me exactly what I need to hear and she doesn’t judge. Not sure how she acquired that skill, sure she has suffered, there is no doubt about that. But does one need to suffer in order to give that kind of comfort to someone who is suffering? I’d like to think not, since I would probably need the whole world to suffer in order to relate to me, and certainly there are those that have suffered more and would I need to suffer more to relate to them? I think you can see where this is going…

Anyway, my story is this. I am 37 now. When I was 20 years old I had an experience while under the influence of LSD that changed my life forever. It’s hard to say now if this experience was just the removal of a dam that was holding back latent mental illness of if the experience in and of itself was enough to forever alter my experience.

I was at a concert of the Jerry Garcia Band and I was having a great time. I remember having an extraordinary (one of my favorite words) spiritual experience. Felt like every note Jerry played was like it was being plucked on a lyre in my heart. I remember thinking “How does this man know me?” It was an extremely intimate experience to say the least.

Just about at the end of the show, I felt as though Jerry and I were going to become one. But it felt like in order to do so I was going to have to sublimate some very deep seated questions I had about myself and I couldn’t do it. The result was that something inside my brain essentially “popped.” As though I’d overloaded the circuits and blew a fuse. I was never the same again. For one, I went from being an every day pot smoker to someone who experienced total anguish when I smoked thereafter. I knew something was wrong, and I knew that I probably wouldn’t be able to fix it. A year and a half later, I was hospitalized for the first time, suicidal and out of answers. It was suggested to me there that I get clean and I did. I started attending 12-step meetings in the hospital and I was particularly attracted to the 2nd step “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” I was desperate to be sane again and it seemed like this was a way. I continued to go to meetings after I left the hospital, but I still knew that I wasn’t quite feeling right.

One night, a few days after I left the hospital, I miraculously and instantaneously felt like I was back in my body (not that I’d been having an out of body experience, just that I no longer felt trapped inside my body) and that I was fully occupying the space of my body and I felt great. Unfortunately, this only lasted the span of about 8 months, after which I went back to feeling like I was not quite right, or trapped inside of myself. And I’ve felt that way ever since. That was in 1997, the original injury happened in 1995.

I’ve remained clean, but my functioning has been impaired ever since. I lack a fundamental clarity of mind that I think is fundamental to living a life worth living. That’s a bit defeatist, I know, I’m tired and hopefully I’ll explain what I mean a little later.

Anyway, though I was mostly able to forge ahead, I would get tired trying to outthink my condition which would result in me becoming suicidal and desperate. I was hospitalized no less than probably about a dozen times, during which I’d regain my strength, get put on some other random anti-depressant medication and on one occasion ECT. Nothing has made me feel the way I want to feel (and I know now that I’m not necessarily entitled to that I still aim (ed) for it).

This last year has seen my ability to cope deteriorate, resulting in a recent run of back to back to back hospitalizations, poorer functioning and ever more anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications.

Where is this all going? Given what’s happened over the last 17 years or so, what can I expect to change? That’s where the thoughts of suicide come and my praying for death. At this point, I wonder if just riding out this flaming crash would be better than taking my own life, but that’s not really what I’d like to keep me going.